Heritage

What’s this blog about?

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This is part of Genealympics challenges put together by AnceStories and Genea-Musings. This challenge falls under the Write! Write! Write! category.

It’s been awhile since I’ve told my readers what this blog is about. Probably two years ago…since the last Genealympics.

The Research Journal is an offshoot of my website Portuguese Hawaiian Genealogy and Heritage. The focus of that website is primarily Portuguese Hawaiian genealogy as it pertains to Hawaii, the Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde, and Portugal.

My genealogy encompasses far more than my Portuguese lines. My tree spreads out from California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to Australia, England, Ireland, Wales, France, the Azores, and Portugal. The Portuguese lines hit royalty in the 1400s so my tree spreads across Europe and into the Middle East as well.

Because my tree is so diverse, I wanted a place to share my research experiences, tips, and family stories. I didn’t feel it was right to clog up yourislandroutes.com with stories about my ancestors in Ogeu les bains or Sydney. That is when The Research Journal was born.

I started this blog in January of 2006. At first, this blog focused primarily on specific research problems which I worked out in regular journal entries.

There came a point where I got bored with the narrow focus. The Research Journal disappeared from the web world. Then, in June of 2008, my mind refreshed, I took another stab at it. I used the same name but changed the purpose. The new blog would cover my all areas of my research. This includes covering research problems, telling family stories, sharing information on how to research, links to new databases, photographs of my relatives, and more.

Over the years I have added the Friday Free Ebook feature where I post about ebooks that pertain to my areas of research and are available online for free, Wedding Chapel Wednesday where I feature a couple who has married, and the That’s Old News feature that covers interesting stories I find in old newspapers. These are added to infrequently. I sometimes participate in different Carnivals and Themes that are run by various genea bloggers.

The blog look has been through a couple of transformations. Last Summer, I updated the look to its current format.

So, if you happen upon this blog there is a good chance you’re going to find posts that pertain to many different areas of research. One day it might be about the Jones in San Francisco research and another it might be about an earlier Azorean settler. You just never know! Though, the focus is on my roots, I hope that the wide variety is interesting to many people.